Page 43 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

30 EDESSA UNDER THE KINGS

the leaders of Edessan society and the West. At this early period, trade brought
the merchants of Edessa into touch with cities far beyond Palmyra. We have
several allusions, confirmed by independent sources, to the important role of
merchants in the dissemination of cultural and religious ideas.1 There was
constant traffic between Edessa and Adiabene, through Nisibis. In the first
century A.D. the ruling house of Adiabene was Jewish, and its members made
frequent and prolonged visits to Jerusalem. The Jewish community at
Edessa had considerable influence on the thought and practices of their
city, as we shall see; and the host of the Apostle Addai, who converted
Edessa to Christianity, was, the Syriac tradition tells us, a certain Tobias,
from Palestine and presumably a Jew.2 Towards the end of the monarchy,
Edessa was under the political control of Rome. Abgar's emissaries in the
story of Addai submit their reports to the Roman Governor of Syria. But
it was, no doubt, the fashions of Rome itself that were followed at Edessa.
The visit to the Imperial capital by Abgar the Great at the invitation of
Septimius Severus was, we have observed, an occasion of some magnitude,
clearly intended to make an impression on a potentially useful ally. The
reception accorded to Abgar suggests that nothing short of extreme magnifi-
cence would have had the effect that the Emperor desired; Edessans must
have been familiar already with the ordinary luxuries of the capital. The
Edessans, concerning whom two inscriptions have been found at Rome, may
have arrived there as exiles or hostages, but it may be assumed that they
assimilated themselves to Roman society.3
It was, however, Greek culture, transmitted to the East by Alexander and
his successors, that left an impress on Edessa. The coins of Edessa carried
legends in Greek.4 This was more than a formal convention. We have noted
that one part of the bilingual text at Deyr Yakup near Edessa was in Greek,
and that Greek is found side by side with Hebrew on the early Jewish
funerary inscriptions at Kirk Magara.5 On the Edessan document of 243 the

1 For Mesopotamia see p. 68. The impor- six, of a certain Abgar, son of 'the former King
tance of Edessa in the commercial world of the Abgar'. The tomb was erected by the deceased
time is shown by the feet that nearly half the man's brother, Antoninus; they were perhaps
coins minted between A.D. 220 and 251 that the sons of Abgar IX, Severus.
were discovered at Dura Europos had origina- * The earliest known coins of Edessa after
ted there (41 per cent—48 per cent); Nisibis the Seleucid period have legends in Syriac.
and Antioch are far behind with respectively They were minted under the pro-Parthian
17 per cent—30 per cent and 16 per cent—18 king Wa'el, his successor Ma'nu Philorhomaios
per cent. who was restored to the throne by the Romans,
2 This, however, is not mentioned in the and the next king, Abgar the Great, probably
Greek tradition presented by Eusebius. in the early part of his reign. Thereafter the
3 It was probably Abgar X, Frahad who legends are in Greek.
set up a tomb at Rome to his wife Hodda. His 5 See pp. 27,42. A Greek inscription appears
brief Latin inscription contains conventional beside two busts on a relief now in the Urfa
formulae: D M Abgar Phrahates filius rex museum, and may be dated Sel. 488 (A.D. 176-
principis Orrhenoru Hodda conjugi bene merenti 7), if our decipherment is correct. The text
fee. At Rome too, a Greek inscription records appears to read: 'The year HTTY, the month
in elegiac verse the death, at the age of twenty- Gorpiaios, Zabdibolos". The use, however, of

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